Sunday, July 12, 2015

Since everything had gone wrong, the agents of the Special Operations Executive decided to have one last go at finding the missing Lionel Malo before they attempted to escape Vichy France. They knew that the German occultist had been in the warren of caves beneath the valley and they also knew of an entrance to those caves on the land of the Toulon family; the agents did not have a good relationship with the Toulons and also suspected them of being cultists, so they didn't ask for permission and instead nipped over a wall towards the back of the orchard.

Mike McVeigh took the lead and peered into the dusk, searching for the hidden cave entrance he'd found the day before, with the rest of the agents following close behind, some less sneaky than others; Pierre-Yves Bertrand and Tidelina both blundered through the undergrowth but no one was alerted, or so it seemed.

McVeigh found the door and using some bolt cutters -- did they have bolt cutters in 1941? -- he'd borrowed from the Decharette mansion he broke through the chain holding the door closed. Before the group could enter the caves there was a howl from the trees behind them and a furry, hoofed figure leaped at McVeigh.

It looked half-human and half-goat, like the faun of classical myth, but with an alien, malevolent face, and the sight of it shook the agents' resolve; most held their ground but Fergus O'Brien's mind snapped and he started to howl and wail in response to the creature's own roars, while firing his rifle close to Kirby Tinkerton's ear and deafening the scientist. Oops.

Despite the panic -- caused more by O'Brien than the faun -- the agents focussed gunfire on the beast and after a worrying number of shots it fell to the ground. McVeigh beheaded the thing while the rest of the group attempted to calm the rifle-wielding O'Brien, so they were all occupied when another two of the horned monsters erupted from the bushes.

Tinkerton attempted to escape up a tree but lost his footing and fell into the path of a rampaging faun, but luck was on his side as the thing missed and ran head first into the trunk of the tree, stunning itself. Meanwhile McVeigh's patience had worn thin and he blasted the other faun with his MP 40; he emptied a third of a clip into the creature and converted it into a cloud of bloody chunks.

It was around this time that the agents decided that the Malo rescue mission was beyond their capabilities and they legged it; Tinkerton was the last to scramble across the wall and looking back, he saw dark shapes moving amongst the trees in pursuit. As the agents sprinted away from the orchard they almost ran into a German Kübelwagen coming the other way, no doubt to investigate the gunfire at the Toulon place; a few minutes later they heard bursts of automatic fire coming from the orchard and more than one of the agents expressed the view that the Nazis and the terrible goat things deserved each other.

They scrambled back to where they had concealed the Gestapo Kübelwagen and made ready to leave. While the others planned the escape route, McVeigh wandered off into the deeper woods and, once he'd made sure he was alone, he sang the song he'd been taught by the mysterious dapper chap from his dreams; McVeigh felt his vitality drain away, and he had a clear sense that something was coming to that spot, but there was no other immediate effect. Disappointed, he returned to the group.

They decided that crossing the demarcation line into occupied France and heading for a coastal town was too risky, so instead chose to drive the Kübelwagen south, over the Pyrenees and into neutral Spain; aside from a random German checkpoint and some rough terrain they made the trip intact and arrived in Madrid many days later, battered and exhausted. There the agents made contact with the SOE and arranged passage back to London.

Their superior -- codenamed N, which isn't suspicious at all -- was not pleased with the group's lack of success in either of its missions but acknowledged that it could have been worse, and they did at least have a faun's severed head to show for it. They were soon packed off to a secure location for debriefing and -- in O'Brien's case -- intensive psychoanalysis.

And that was that! Although one could argue that the players didn't do too well everyone seemed to have fun; we're going to take a break for a few weeks as various members of the group disappear for the summer, but World War Cthulhu has been enough of a hit that there will be at least one more mission for the agents of the SOE in the autumn.

Monday, July 06, 2015

With the explosive destruction of their house and the authorities due to arrive at any moment, it looked like the Special Operations Executive agents' cover was blown. Ho ho. Kirby Tinkerton and Mike McVeigh picked up the unconscious and wounded Tidelina and used back streets and alleyways to flee the village; meanwhile the sound of the explosion had woken Pierre-Yves Bertrand and Fergus O'Brien over at the Decharette mansion -- I was being kind -- and sensing trouble, they hopped on their cycles and rushed to the village. Surveying the destruction and seeing local gendarme -- and Nazi sympathiser -- Henri Jourdain flailing about in his nightshirt in an attempt to calm a situation well beyond his control, Bertrand and O'Brien moved on, satisfied at least that their comrades had not been arrested.

Assuming that they also had not perished in the explosion, O'Brien guessed that his fellow agents would either head to the mansion or the Martin farm; if it had been the former they would have crossed paths so chances were they were with the partisans. On the way to the Martin farm the two groups met and Tinkerton and McVeigh explained what had happened; as the agents crouched in a roadside ditch they discussed their next move.

They knew that events had escalated to the point that they wouldn't be able to avoid the authorities so they decided that they would turn themselves in and present a story that would divert attention away from them long enough for them to complete their missions. They came up with three options:

Option one: Blame the cultists. Although this was more or less the truth, and pitting the Nazis against the cultists would be an efficient solution to both problems, the agents realised that it would be difficult to convince the Germans of the existence of a cult, not least because they themselves had no evidence of such a thing.

Option two: Pretend to be Gestapo officers. Another dead end, as they had no way of disguising themselves as the German secret police, nor were they sure what they would do if they did.

Option three: Blame the whole thing on Kirby Tinkerton. The scientist had access to explosives through his job at the copper mine and had been seen there earlier in the day, so it would not be too implausible to suggest that he had stolen some TNT and had set it off by accident.

The third option seemed the best of the lot. They would claim that they had no idea what Sarkozy -- Tinkerton's alias -- was doing until it was too late and that he had died in the explosion, hoping that the authorities would not expend the time and resources needed to search the rubble for his body; to maintain the pretence he would hide at the Decharette mansion and McVeigh would provide him with a disguise.

With their plan decided the agents continued to the Martin farm. Helena Martin once again gave up her bed for Tidelina and while the Australian's wounds were cleaned and bound, the agents explained recent events to the the Martins. They also started making demands of the partisan couple; McVeigh pressed them on the status of the suitcase plan and Tinkerton ordered them to roam the countryside for components for home-made bombs, but Helena pointed out that as the agents had alienated or murdered most of the partisan group, there wasn't anyone left to run their errands. Pierre-Yves declared them to be useless and an embarrassment to France, which was perhaps not the best approach, and everyone took their grudges to bed.

During the night McVeigh dreamed again of the mysterious and suave gentleman, who asked if the spy had sang the song he'd been taught in one of their previous encounters. McVeigh admitted that he had not and the gentleman suggested that perhaps he should do so soon, as it could help the agents with their current predicament. With a tentative agreement from McVeigh, the gentleman left the Martin farmhouse and disappeared into the darkness.

Over an awkward breakfast, Tinkerton attempted to use his scientific training to explain how a satyr had used pan pipes to set off plastic explosives but the incongruity of it all was too much and all he got for all his theorising was some Sanity loss. Later McVeigh smuggled him into the Decharette mansion and he made himself as comfortable as possible in the house's dusty attic while Bertrand and O'Brien went into the village and presented themselves to the authorities; they were arrested and locked in a cell in the village's small police station, as was McVeigh when he arrived.

The agents were questioned by Oberstleutnant Klier, who took their identification papers and left to investigate further. He returned a few hours later to tell the prisoners -- with a heavy heart, it seemed -- that some colleagues of his would soon arrive in the village to take over the investigation.

Oh dear.

"I don't want to wait for the Gestapo to get here and execute us," said Bertrand, and the agents spent most of the night arguing over their next move. They were forced to admit that whatever they decided, their cover mission -- to set up a resistance network -- was beyond their ability to complete, and that left them with the question of whether they should continue to pursue their secret mission -- to find the missing occultist Lionel Malo -- or if they were better off legging it to the coast or the border with Spain.

After a long and heated discussion the agents decided to remain in jail and wait for a better opportunity to make their escape, and to then make one last attempt to find -- and rescue, if possible -- Malo. The choice made, they waited.

The next morning, Klier returned with three Gestapo officers, one a scarred wreck of a man with one eye, who introduced himself as Kriminalkomissar Wolfhelm Lucht and selected O'Brien for interrogation. Fergus was bundled into a chair and Lucht lowered himself -- pain evident on his mangled face -- into another; the two other officers took up a position by the door and Klier retreated to the corner of the small office, his discomfort clear.

Lucht picked holes in O'Brien's story but the Irishman manoeuvred well -- the points invested in his Fast Talk and Persuade skills were well spent -- and if he didn't convince the German, he at least seemed to impress him. Things seemed to be going as well as could be expected given the circumstances, until Lucht slapped the agent's identification papers on the table and asked why Fergus and his friends were carrying faked documents.

Oh dear.

O'Brien spun a story about unreliable Belgian bureaucracy, and after some thought Lucht nodded to his men. Bertrand and McVeigh were released from their cells and the three agents were marched to the door, the Gestapo officers behind them, weapons drawn; two more Gestapo officers waited outside, also with their guns at the ready. It was a bit tense.

Exhausted, unarmed, and surrounded by Germans with automatic weapons, the agents thought their time was up, but to their surprise Lucht indicated that they were free to go, although he'd be keeping their documents. Expecting bullet in their backs at any moment, the agents walked across the village square and out of town.

They returned to the Decharette mansion and kept their heads down as they made their plans. Tinkerton was given the team's radio and was sent running across the fields to the Martin farm, as they agents suspected that the mansion was no longer safe; they were proved correct when Bertrand spotted an occupied Kübelwagen parked not far from the house. They had to move.

As night fell, the agents made a break for it. Bertrand and O'Brien left through the back of the mansion and used the cover of the old monastery ruins to stay out of the view of the men in the Kübelwagen, while McVeigh stayed behind to provide a distraction. It almost worked too, until Bertrand and O'Brien became separated and the Frenchman disturbed a flock of birds, giving away his position.

One Gestapo officer raced across the fields to investigate; both the agents were well hidden and the German literally stumbled over Bertrand, but before he could act O'Brien took a shot with his rifle. The shot missed but it was enough to send the German diving for cover and he and Bertrand scuffled on the ground; he tried to knock Bertrand out but the Frenchman was taking no chances and blasted away with his pistol. As O'Brien scurried up in support, the mêlée ended with Bertrand blowing the top off the German's skull, sending blood and brain matter spattering into Fergus' eyes.

In hindsight, I should have called for a Sanity roll for that.

Meanwhile the other Gestapo officer and McVeigh stalked each other through the mansion gardens, a slow and stealthy contest in comparison to the frenzied scramble in the fields nearby. In the end it came down to luck; we've been using the expendable Luck mechanic from the upcoming seventh edition of Call of Cthulhu, a simple rule that states that a character can spend points from their Luck score to adjust a dice roll to turn it into a success. I don't remember if the rule allows points to be used to enforce a failure on an NPC's roll but it seemed like a reasonable request when the German rolled a 96 for his attack. That 96 became a 97, the MP40 jammed, and that was that for Gestapo Bloke #2.

The agents looted the bodies and concealed the Germans' vehicle in a nearby wood, then ran towards the Toulon orchard and the entrance to the caves in which they hoped they would find Lionel Malo. They were in a hurry; the Kübelwagen was equipped with a radio, suggesting that Lucht would be expecting an update from his men at some point. Time was running out.

Saturday, July 04, 2015

In a bold move that is quite uncharacteristic of a company that has made a business plan of biennial releases of nigh-identical rulesets, Games Workshop yesterday rebooted its Warhammer fantasy wargame as Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and the reaction has been fascinating. I'm used to seeing edition wars in role-playing game conversations -- well, in conversations about Dungeons and Dragons for the most part -- but GW gamers tend to grumble a bit about new editions then buy everything anyway; those that don't go and play older editions or other games and leave the discussion. This time it's been a bit different.

Early on there were rumours that the game would be using circular bases as standard, although the square bases of the previous editions would remain legal. This seemed to be the worst news ever according to a lot of the online fans although I couldn't see that it would make much difference, but then I haven't played since about 1998 so I may have missed a particular subtlety.

The bulk of the rules for the new game were released yesterday and confirmed that yes, circular bases were in, so I imagine that there has been much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair around the world. The rules do seem to be somewhat incomplete; the basic game mechanics seem to be there and GW has released free rules updates for its existing model range for the new game, but there does seem to be a gap in terms of how the models work in the new game.

With the Age of Sigmar boxed set the expectation seems to be that you have enough rules material to use the contents of the box; here are the rules for twenty chaos warriors because twenty chaos warriors came with the game. Fair enough, that makes sense. It gets more complicated once you look outside the box, at existing armies; if you want to use your orcs -- or Orruks™ as they are called now -- then you have rules for them, but how many units of orc boyz can you field? How many troll mobs can you bring to a battle? That bit isn't clear and it seems to be driving the fans insane.

My assumption is that at some point a standalone rulebook will be released and army building mechanics will be included, but perhaps GW should have given some idea of how it would work, or provided a basic version; as it stands they've left players of older armies with just enough information that they know they haven't been abandoned but not enough to know how to play the new game, and I can understand why that's frustrating, but perhaps not to the level of the frothing mania I've seen online in the past couple of days.

Perhaps the oddest revelation of the past few hours is that the rules contain stuff like this:

This sort of thing is common in board gaming -- "the player with the pointiest ears goes first" --and was also a frequent occurrence in the days when Warhammer was called Warhammer Fantasy Battle. These days there are remnants of this approach in the animosity rules for orcs or the way goblin fanatics work, but in general the sense of humour and fun has been ground out of GW games over the years so it is a surprise to see it return, and in a major release. It's been a nasty surprise for the same sort of people who think circular bases are the work of Satan Slaanesh, but it's a pleasant surprise for me, as I miss the days when ork vehicles really would go faster if you painted them red.

I find myself quite optimistic about this new edition of the game. The idea seems to be simpler rules and smaller and more affordable armies and as someone who got priced out of Warhammer in the previous century, that's a move I welcome. The release of free rules is something to be applauded even if everyoneelse has been doing it for a while and there is a certain level of bravery in such a sweeping reboot of the ruleset from such a conservative company, and I feel that should be encouraged.

Yes, it is a shame that the old setting is gone, but the game world GW has been pushing for the last couple of decades isn't the one in which I've been playing so I'm not too bothered. If I were a fan of the previous edition of the rules I could be miffed that they've been scrapped but if I were such an adherent, there's nothing stopping me from playing an older edition.

This looks like a version of Warhammer that I can not only afford but that looks fun to play, and so I find myself interested in the game for the first time in a couple of decades. I don't know what GW considers to be the criteria for a successful product launch, but it works for me.

Sunday, June 28, 2015

At the end of the previous session, the agents of the Special Operations Executive discovered that the German troops occupying the French village of Saint Cenreuf du Bois were all gathered in the village's restaurant, preparing the place for a party. I pointed out that with the Germans all in town the Decharette copper mine would be under only light guard, a suggestion that the players took to be unsubtle railroading, but the irony was that all my preparation had been focussed in another direction; as it turned out the players got themselves into enough trouble without any nudging from me.

They stopped off at the Decharette mansion on their way and convinced Claude Decharette to give them a note allowing them to inspect the mine; this document got them past the guard at the gate, although he did seem a bit suspicious about all the tools -- the agents had concealed firearms in their tool bags -- the group had brought along.

Using the sketched map they suspected had been left behind by the missing Lionel Malo -- the object of their secret mission -- they soon found a concealed passage from the upper level of the mine to a warren of natural tunnels that seemed to be in regular use. The team elected to avoid going anywhere near the Devil's Field or the mysterious wood nearby and so turned -- as far as they could tell without a dwarf in the party -- south, towards the village; their goal was to find an alternate entrance so they would not have to rely on the mine for future expeditions into the depths.

Some of the tunnels were too small for the bulky Mike McVeigh and that limited the team's explorations; one such place was a cave that they guessed was somewhere near the river, but since it was the first open area they had found since descending into the tunnels they decided that exploring it was worth the risk of splitting the party. Pierre-Yves Bertrand's small stature made him a good fit for the cockpit of a plane but also made him the best candidate to explore the cave; Fergus O'Brien crawled through on his hands and knees to support the French pilot while the rest of the team stayed in the tunnel.

The cave's muddy floor seemed to have been petrified or frozen somehow but no one had a sufficient Geology skill to understand whether that was unusual or what it could mean; on the plus side they did not need any points in Geology to spot the large and ominous hole in the centre of the cave floor. Bertrand looped a length of rope around his waist and made sure the rest of the team held on tight as he crawled over to the edge. Peering in he saw the darkness stretching out to an unknown depth; his lamp could not illuminate the bottom and he had no desire to throw anything down, for some reason.

Another passage led from the cave but the hole made the agents wary and the difficulty of getting into the cave in the first place put them off further exploration in that direction, so Bertrand returned to the tunnel from which he'd entered. Just as he got to the entrance a strange buzzing whine filled the air and everyone felt a great pressure from all around them; as the buzzing increased in intensity the bulbs in their lamps exploded, plunging the team into darkness, and the walls began to shake. O'Brien found that the matches he had brought -- while still dry -- would not light so he could not see part of the ceiling collapsing on Pierre-Yves, trapping the Frenchman's leg under rubble.

Oh dear.

They did well not to panic. Dodgy scientist Kirby Tinkerton lost it a little as all his fancy academic knowledge failed to provide an explanation for what was happening, but the rest of the team kept as calm as could be expected given the circumstances. Bertrand managed to direct his colleagues to his location and together they dug him out, by which time the buzzing and shaking had passed; O'Brien tried again to provide light and this time his matches worked, so he was able to put together a basic torch.

Flickering light was better than none and the agents decided to press on and explore further. Before their torch expired they discovered a small cave in which there was a door that seemed to lead to the surface; a heavy chain on the other side prevented the agents from leaving the caves through the door, but McVeigh peeked through and saw what looked like apple trees. With their light running out, the agents returned to the mines and emerged looking somewhat battered and bruised. The guard to whom they had spoken on the way in was surprised at their condition and asked if he should make a report; grumpy and tired, they told him to do what he liked.

Oh dear.

They knew that the Toulon family owned an orchard and so decided to head there in search of the cave exit, but found the front gates secured; leaving Tidelina to watch out for trouble, the rest of the agents scrambled over the wall. At first McVeigh wanted to sneak up to the Toulon house but suspecting that his comrades would scupper any attempt at stealth, he decided to walk up in the open; as expected he was spotted and Albert Toulon -- one of the partisans and uncle to Pierre -- came out of the house to confront him.

It turned out that the Toulons were not best pleased by the agents' treatment of young Pierre and would not have been happy to see them even if they weren't trespassing. McVeigh's attempts to justify the beating of Pierre as necessary for the war effort did not seem to convince the boy's uncle and he suggested that the agents leave; when McVeigh indicated that they would not do so, Albert went inside and slammed the door.

Bertrand, O'Brien, and Tinkerton sat down to watch the house while McVeigh searched the grounds for the cave entrance; he found it in a distant corner of the orchard, well hidden and far enough away from the house that it was possible that the Toulons could have no idea of its presence, but Bertrand was not convinced of their ignorance in the slightest and convinced the team to consider a direct assault on the house.

Their plans were interrupted as Tidelina spotted an approaching vehicle. A German Kübelwagen was coming up the road from the village, on its way to the mine perhaps, and so Tidelina whistled an alert; the Germans also seemed to hear the warning -- 02 on their Listen roll! -- and stopped, but by this time the Australian was well away so was unable to see what they were doing.

Everyone froze. A couple of minutes later the vehicle started up again and they heard it moving off into the distance so Bertrand sneaked up to the orchard gates for a better look; peeking under the gates he saw the distinctive jackboots of a German soldier pacing in the dirt and he reported this back to the rest of the team. With a soldier right outside the plan to break into the Toulon house by force was much less appealing so the agents decided to come back another day.

They decided to return to the Shunned House their rented accommodation via the Martin farm. There they told the Martins of the German patrol at the Toulon orchard and warned the partisans to be careful, and then things went a bit strange. McVeigh almost broke cover and told a wide-eyed Helena Martin about strange rural cults, monks living in caves underground, his suspicions that the Toulons were involved with such a cult, and that as such their loyalties did not lie with the partisan group.

It was quite clear to all that Helena thought that McVeigh was mad but she told him that she would think about what he had said and perhaps visit the Toulons to find out for herself what was going on; she also pointed out that if the Germans were indeed on their way then it would not look good if the agents were found clogging up her kitchen, and as this made a lot of sense, they left.

The agents split up, with Bertrand and O'Brien returning to their lodgings at the mansion and the rest of the team returning to the Shunned House their house in the village. There, McVeigh dreamed of himself and the rest of the agents dancing around a bonfire deep in the woods, but before he could experience more he was woken by a clattering sound on the roof of the house, like footsteps but also not. As he listened the clattering stopped and an odd piping started, increasing in volume and tempo as the piper on the roof played its strange song. Then the buzzing began.

Lights went out, windows cracked, and walls began to shake and the agents, fearing a repeat of the incident in the caves, chose to flee the house as the buzzing increased in volume. McVeigh and Tinkerton made it out first and spotted a hooved, faun-like figure on the roof, but Tidelina was slower on her feet and was just passing McVeigh's hidden weapons cache under the stairs as the buzzing set off the explosives inside.

Friday, June 26, 2015

In this World War Cthulhu session, no non-player characters were tied to chairs and strangled, no elderly drunks were beaten into unconsciousness, no German soldiers were shot in the eye, and no one smashed up a wine cellar looking for secret tunnels. That's not to say that there weren't a couple of moments during which I wondered what the heck the players were, er, playing at, but on the whole they were being quite sedate and sensible.

Leon Ferrand was dead but his eager sidekick Pierre Toulon was still alive -- tied to a chair, of course -- and something needed to be done about him. After a brief discussion, the agents decided that Toulon was none too bright and was more or less Ferrand's puppet so with the -- alleged -- spy out of the picture, they felt it was safe enough to return young Pierre to the partisans. They decided to set off early in the morning to avoid being seen but forgot that Saint Cerneuf was in part a farming community; Pierre did not and tried to call for help from a passing farmer but was silenced by a threat from the volatile Fergus O'Brien.

The group arrived at the Martin farm where they handed Toulon over to the Martins and told them all about Leon being a spy for an unknown agency, and what they had done to end any potential threat from him. Helena and Jacques were shocked but seemed to accept the story and promised to deal with Toulon. The agents then took the opportunity to follow a couple of leads they'd picked up from Ferrand and asked the Martins about Giscard Bressan; it was clear that the subject made Jacques Martin uncomfortable and like hungry lions surrounding a wounded gazelle, the players focussed their attentions on him.

The agents decided to separate the Martins and see if they could break Jacques but then something interesting happened; the original plan was to leave dodgy scientist Kirby Tinkerton with Helena and Pierre -- who was still tied up -- while the rest went for a walk with Jacques, but Pierre-Yves Bertrand was overcome by a sudden wave of anxiety and refused to leave the Englishman alone. It seemed that the French pilot had a bad feeling about Helena Martin and was convinced that Kirby would be in significant danger if left alone with her.

With Bertrand and Tinkerton enjoying Helena's hospitality, Tidelina, O'Brien, and Mike McVeigh took Jacques for a morning walk around the fields and interrogated him about his relationship with Bressan and why he was keeping it from his wife. They all thought that Jacques and Giscard were secret lovers so were surprised -- and I think disappointed -- when Jacques revealed that they were nothing more than drinking buddies; unsatisfied, they pressed him for more and he confessed to having a criminal past and that it was possible that Bressan knew about it, but Jacques had been able to deflect his attention away from the topic whenever it had come up in conversation.

Upon their return to the farmhouse they discovered that not only had Bressan himself turned up but Albert Toulon had arrived and, surprised to see his nephew Pierre there and somewhat worse for wear, taken the boy home. The agents decided to go for another lap around the farm, this time with Bressan; he was a bit more forthcoming than Jacques and admitted that he was a black marketeer and smuggler man who could get things, so McVeigh made a tentative deal with him.

Then, after making sure Bressan was going to be at the Martin farm for the rest of the day, the agents broke into his house and stumbled upon some guns in a hidden cache; unable to help themselves they, er, helped themselves to the firearms. Now they had machine guns. Ho ho ho.

Although it was still early on Saturday the 19th of April, the agents decided to rest for the remainder of the day, and contacted London later that evening. They reported their activities and Bertrand made the bold claim that they had secured a potential landing site on the so-called Devil's Field; although the Decharette mansion overlooked the field, the pilot assured his superiors back in Britain that the agents controlled the building. In turn, London asked the agents to give the partisan group a task to test their loyalty and reliability, and told them to check in again on the 22nd.

How does one test the loyalty and reliability of partisans? Simple! By filling a suitcase with books that have had random words marked by an expert cryptographer so as to look like a secret message, then getting the partisans to deliver the suitcase to a priest in Cahors, a priest who has no idea that the suitcase is coming or what is contained within.

Okay.

With the plan in place, the agents retired for the evening. The next day they decided to go to church, in part to integrate themselves into the community and in part to see who didn't turn up, because non-attendance was a sure sign of cultist tendencies. If the tally of the villages led to any significant suspicions -- aside from those concerning poor Father Beaumarais, whose constant nervousness was a red flag to the paranoid players -- the agents did not act upon them.

Walking through the village after the service the agents spotted a couple of German vehicles parked outside the restaurant and a great deal of activity within. Sneaking over for a look, Bertrand and McVeigh saw a number of German soldiers moving furniture around at the direction of Oberstleutnant Klier, the officer in charge of operations at the former Decharette copper mine. It seemed that the Germans were getting ready for a party of some sort. It was O'Brien who first made the connection. It was the 20th of April. Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Up to this point, the players had been cautious and had been noodling around, prodding at the mysteries of Saint Cerneuf, but avoiding bold moves, aside from the incident with the German soldiers. All that changed with this most recent session as they made the switch from cautious Call of Cthulhu investigators to ruthless military bastards.

We had left the player-characters interviewing Raimond Decharette about his missing wife and her connection to a local cult, and with Pierre-Yves Bertrand having suspicions about whether Raimond was in fact Reni's father, as he claimed to be. The team put aside their questions about the Decharette family tree and instead asked the old man whether he had a copy of The Revelations of Saint Serenus in his library, as they were certain that the book would help them uncover the truth about what was going on in the village.

Raimond did not have a copy but explained that he once did, and it was now part of the Decharette collection at the village library, so that's where the Special Operations Executive agents went next, half-expecting the book to be gone. Not only was the book still present -- the adventure as written is a bit unclear on whether the copy exists, but I got tired of wrestling with inconsistent vagaries in the text and decided that it did -- but so too were the diagrams missing from the copy they had inspected in Cahors. Fergus O'Brien suspected that the spiral drawings were part of some cypher as the pages were thinner than those in the rest of the book and they seemed designed to be laid over text in order to derive another meaning; as the Revelations were written in Latin and it would take up to two weeks to translate, the agents were not able to confirm O'Brien's suspicion at that time.

Based on the note they had found and assumed to have been written by the missing Lionel Malo, the agents were convinced that the Decharette mansion sat atop a network of tunnels, and so decided to return the next day to investigate. A suspicious draught in the mansion's wine cellar seemed to confirm their belief and so they started chipping away at the wall while Pierre-Yves kept watch. He spotted young Reni Decharette ambling out of the mysterious wood and across the Devil's Field towards the mansion, stopping at one point to examine something on the ground; Mike McVeigh later investigated the spot and found a small stone statue of a satyr or fawn, an item that he pocketed for later study.

Tidelina intercepted the young woman and kept her attentions away from the activity in the cellar by playing cards with her in the mansion's kitchen and winning her over with pleasant small talk. Meanwhile the rest of the team broke through the thick cellar wall to discover that the tunnel opening they had uncovered was just about big enough for a small dog to scramble through and so would be far too tight a squeeze for the average cultist.

Disappointed, the agents decided to switch back to their military mission and in the evening visited the Martin farm to make contact with their partisan allies. There they discovered that most of the group was elsewhere, with only Helena Martin and Leon Ferrand present and engaged in an argument over the group's activities. They listened for a while before announcing their arrival, and Ferrand took the opportunity to excuse himself and return to the village; the SOE agents questioned Helena about Leon as they found his strong advocacy of direct action against the Germans worrying, and their concerns weren't allayed by her answers.

As the rest of the group returned home, McVeigh attempted to follow Ferrand but lost him as they got closer to the village; McVeigh -- himself was a former spy -- took this as evidence of special training, and not a lucky stealth roll on my part. McVeigh decided to report his wild speculation discovery to the rest of the group and upon his return to The Shunned House their lodgings he spotted someone watching the building from the shadows. McVeigh captured the observer, dragged him into the house, and discovered him to be Pierre Toulon, another of the partisans.

Pierre told the SOE agents that Ferrand had asked him to watch them and make sure they could be trusted. This aggravated their paranoia even further and so they tied the young man to a chair and roughed him up a bit in order to get answers; Toulon stuck to his story and had nothing but praise for Ferrand, a man he saw as a great patriot. Unsatisfied, the agents decided to get their answers straight from the source.

A few minutes later at Ferrand's modest house, O'Brien sneaked around to watch the back door while McVeigh and Bertrand positioned themselves at the front. McVeigh knocked once and, when no response was forthcoming, knocked a second and louder time. At this second knock, the door opened just enough for Bertrand and McVeigh to see Ferrand peering out, and they sprang into action, barging the door open and sending the partisan to the ground. O'Brien was supposed to be listening out for just such an event but wasn't paying attention and had to be summoned by the other two once they were inside and had subdued Ferrand without the Irishman's assistance.

What followed was a tense hour or so of role-playing as they tied the partisan to a chair -- a bit of a running theme -- and interrogated him about his loyalties and his true plans. He was calm despite the discouraging nature of his situation and even attempted to turn the questioning back on to them: they justified their treatment of him by appealing to their suspicions that he was a double agent, but could their harsh treatment of a supposed ally not be seen as evidence that in fact they were the double agents?

This went down about as well as could be expected and when Ferrand made it clear that they would get no answers from him, McVeigh's frustrations got the better of him and he attempted to strangle the partisan.

The violent outburst was interrupted by the sound of movement upstairs and a muffled voice calling for Leon; the agents had searched the house as soon as they had entered and had found no other occupants so this latest development didn't so much as put them on edge as push them well over. Creeping upstairs they saw a bulky shape at a window, and they rushed to engage the figure; it turned out to be Ferrand's drunk uncle, who had climbed in the window after finding both the front and back doors locked and bolted by the player-characters. For the crime of interrupting their interrogation they beat the old man into unconsciousness and tied him to a bed.

Upon their return to the ground floor, a hoarse Ferrand relented somewhat and admitted that he did indeed have special training as a member of the French secret service but that he was out of the country during the invasion and so, lacking orders and with no desire to conduct a one-man infiltration of occupied Paris, he headed instead for Saint Cerneuf du Bois to stay with his uncle and perhaps help the local resistance forces. He also claimed that if there was a double agent in the partisan group then the SOE team should be looking toward Giscard Bressan, who -- in Leon's opinion -- lacked commitment to the cause and had a mysterious connection to Jacques Martin that neither man seemed keen to discuss.

The player-characters -- and indeed the players -- were torn. Ferrand's story was plausible but at the same time they were certain that he wasn't telling the whole truth. If they were to trust him and he turned out to be rotten then he could scupper their operation, but on the other hand, if he wasn't a double-agent then silencing him would not only rob the SOE and the partisans of a useful asset, but the real double-agent -- again, if there was one! -- would still be free to work against them.

This was a great, tense sequence as the player-characters walked out of the room to confer before coming back in to ask Ferrand a few more questions, then walking out again, and so on. For much of this time I didn't have to do anything but sit back and listen as the players discussed and argued and made their cases to each other for either executing Ferrand or letting him go, and even though I wasn't involved in the debate it was thrilling to watch.

In the end, after much discussion, they decided that the risk was too great and as O'Brien looked away, McVeigh strangled Ferrand.

They untied the unconscious uncle and then took Ferrand's body away to be dumped in the river, just as they had with the young German soldier. Their emotions strained and their bodies exhausted, the agents returned to their lodgings to rest but McVeigh found that his sleep was kept at bay by vivid dreams of trees, savage people clad in furs, and a stone knife being plunged into his chest as the people danced and sang and an icy wind howled.

The series went on hiatus while Martin worked on the side project Spandex, about LGBT superheroes in Brighton, but over the past couple of years he's been producing a series of collected editions of the old comics, with the finale to appear in next year's volume five. I mention the release of volume four now because (a) I forgot to mention any of the previous volumes, and (b) I drew a single page in this book. A single page is not enough to earn me any portion of the sales from the book, so believe me when I say it's ace and if you like the description above, give it a try.

The other -- and last! -- bit of blatant salesmongering I need to do is to tell you all about the half price sale at Borderline Press; all books are half off cover price, including Zombre, in which I have one page. Once again I'm getting nothing from the sales of any of the Borderline books but publisher Phil is an old friend so please have a look.

Friday, June 05, 2015

When last we checked in with the agents of the Special Operations Executive they had handed over some of their identification papers to a group of young German soldiers. Their logic was that as undercover agents they didn't want to draw attention to themselves by causing trouble with the authorities, but upon reflection the team realised that not having identification would be worse in the longer term. As such they decided to find the German squad and ask for their papers back; with the persuasive Tidelina on their side the team had an excellent chance of convincing the young soldiers to return the documents.

Except what in fact happened was that Tidelina went for dinner and Pierre-Yves started snooping around the Germans' Kübelwagen, provoking the soldiers and leaving O'Brien to defuse the situation. As it turned out, this group of hotheaded young squaddies were immune to his Irish charm and drew their pistols.

McVeigh had sneaked off and fired a couple of shots in the air in an attempt to draw the Germans away; his plan worked to an extent as three of the five soldiers ran off to trace the source of the gunfire, but this left two drunk Germans waving their firearms in the faces of Bertrand and O'Brien.

Meanwhile, Tidelina and Tinkerton enjoyed their soup.

O'Brien made a break for it and the Oberschütze holding him at gunpoint hesitated, the French beer clouding his judgement. After a moment or two he came to a decision and ran off in pursuit of the Irishman, leaving Pierre-Yves and the last of the German soldiers to stare at each other, neither sure of what to do. A few tense seconds later they seemed to come to some kind of unspoken understanding and the pilot from Toulouse ran off while the soldier went after his commander.

O'Brien managed to evade his pursuer but in an attempt to double back he ended up running straight into the German and the resulting scuffle ended with Fergus shot in the shoulder and the Oberschütze taking a couple of bullets, one right in the eye. O'Brien stumbled off into the darkness, clutching his wound. and bumped into McVeigh, who had shaken off the other three soldiers; together they returned to the corpse of the German and retrieved their missing papers before pitching the body into the river and watching it float out of sight.

Tidelina and Tinkerton finished their dinner and on their way out of the restaurant, the scientist had a quick look at the soldiers' table; to his surprise he found Pierre-Yves' identification papers and a P08 pistol the Germans had left behind in their rush. Having been established during character generation as "a bit shifty", Tinkerton pocketed the lot.

To the north of the village Pierre-Yves had found his way to the Martin farm, where they team had hidden their supplies and radio. Upon announcing his arrival the French pilot heard sounds from within the house that suggested that the Martins were hiding something away. Helena and Jacques invited him in and as they chatted the latter locked and bolted the door behind Pierre-Yves. The players were convinced by this point that everyone in the village -- except perhaps for Raimond Decharette -- was a cultist, so Jacques' zealous security arrangements had everyone thinking that Pierre-Yves' time was up.

The Martins did not sacrifice Bertrand to a cosmic horror and in fact wished him well as he collected his gear and set off towards the Decharette mansion, where he intended to stash the radio. On the way back he spotted someone waving at him from the edge of the woods -- the spooky woods in which O'Brien and McVeigh had got lost soon after their parachute drop -- but could not make out any details and didn't feel like getting closer to that blighted place.

As the night drew on the team members arrived at the Shunned House their rented home and got some rest. They thought that given the evening's events it would be prudent to take turns standing watch and it was during his turn that McVeigh nodded off and had a strange dream in which a smart, bearded man opened the front door of the house and walked in, taking a seat next to him. This odd gentleman posed a series of vague questions to McVeigh and the former commando got the feeling that he was being tested; satisfied -- it seemed, anyway -- with McVeigh's answers the man got up and left the house and McVeigh woke to find himself having slept well into Pierre-Yves' shift.

The next morning the team split up and went off to their respective jobs. O'Brien and Bertrand stomped over to the Decharette mansion where they did a spot of gardening and some light repairs around the house; during their lunch break, Pierre-Yves used the radio to contact London but at first could only pick up what sounded like distant, echoing pan pipes. With a bit of tinkering -- and one or two firm thumps -- the Frenchman was able to banish the odd interference and made his report to SOE HQ. Later that afternoon O'Brien and Bertrand attempted to question their employer Raimond Decharette about local history but seemed to upset him so much by doing so that he retired to his room for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile McVeigh and Tinkerton went to the former Decharette copper mine. They arrived to see a small crowd gathered as a German officer talked about a missing soldier and asked the assembled workers to come forward if they had any information on the young man's whereabouts. After this the two SOE agents were given an introductory tour of the mine and McVeigh reckoned that the layout of the upper level matched that of the map they'd found. He also found where the mine's explosives were kept but while snooping about he was caught by a guard and marched to the the main office.

There McVeigh met the German officer from the morning assembly, an amiable fellow who introduced himself as Oberstleutnant Rupert Klier; despite Klier's charming exterior the encounter was tense as the German recognised that McVeigh's accent was a bit wonky, but the intervention of the mine's clerk and accountant -- and sort-of ally -- Louis Valoir diverted the German's suspicions and McVeigh was allowed to return to work without further investigation or discipline. Later in the day McVeigh approached Valoir with a request to be assigned to guard duty -- thinking that such a role would give him more freedom to explore -- and the clerk promised to do what he could, but that it would require Klier's agreement.

That night McVeigh received another nocturnal visit by the strange gentleman, who gave his name as Nicholas. He taught McVeigh a poem and told him to recite it in an old place, but only at night; by this point the players were convinced that "Nicholas" was Nyarlathotep, but they think every other NPC they meet is a Great Old One in disguise, so it's not a significant hypothesis.

The next morning the team decided to follow up on some leads and head to Cahors to investigate the cathedral library there. They found clues that confirmed that the missing German occultist Lional Malo -- their secret mission is to find him -- had been to the library and had been reading a book called The Revelations of Saint Serenus. They found the book and Tidelina spent some time reading it with the help of a young priest, only to discover that some pages had been torn out; the librarian remembered that the missing pages were some sort of chart or diagram and informed the team that there had been an attempted burglary soon after Malo's visit. The librarian suspected vandals had damaged the book; the agents suspected an occult conspiracy.

With their leads drying up the agents decided to try to question Raimond Decharette once more, this time with a bit more forcefulness. Raimond told them that his wife Maria had gone missing in 1925 but the team found this difficult to accept as Malo's notes suggested that he'd seen her involved with some sort of ritual in 1938; this wrecked whatever composure Raimond had left and he broke down, sobbing half in fear at something unknown and half in hope that his wife was still alive.

As the man weeped and the agents started to feel a bit awkward at making an old man cry in his own home, Pierre-Yves looked around for and found a photograph of the mysterious Maria; he noticed that while there was a pronounced resemblance between Maria and her daughter Reni, the strange young woman did not look at all like her father Raimond!

Thursday, May 21, 2015

To my surprise and relief, the agents of the SOE did not blow anything up. Nor did they kidnap anyone, there were no Mexican stand-offs, and there were no embarrassing blunders.

Well, there was one, but we'll get to that.

While the partisan Jacques Martin was a charming host, his wife Helena was somewhat less welcoming, perhaps as a result of the disagreement between the agents and the partisans in the previous session. Over breakfast she ordered them to (a) find jobs, (b) find somewhere to live, and (c) get all the incriminating secret agent gear out of her pig shed.

As a result, this session consisted of lots of running about town, meeting non-player-characters, and arranging boring things like buying vegetables and furniture.

Tidelina was just about well enough to join the rest of the team on their travels but her mangled arm and pallid complexion generated a lot of attention and more than a few questions; put on the spot the Australian solicitor spun an elaborate tale about a country walk and the unexpected appearance of an angry Spanish donkey. You could argue that this was an unconvincing story but as a solicitor, Tidelina's Fast Talk skill is at 99% and you can't argue with statistics.

O'Brien and Bertrand met Raimond, the head of the Decharette family and owner of the local copper mine. An amiable sort of fellow, he offered them jobs as general workers around the mansion, as most of his staff had fled the conflict. While gardening the two agents took the opportunity to search the nearby monastery ruins, convinced that there was a secret tunnel somewhere leading to a blasphemous cult temple. No temple was discovered but they did find a strange and unnatural cold spot in one part of the old building that was more or less intact and being used as a garden shed; while inside Fergus was sure that he could hear a howling in the stone walls but McVeigh could hear no such thing.

The team later visited the town's church and discovered some odd iconography inside, including an ostentatious painting depicted the temptation of Christ relocated to one of the hills overlooking Saint-Cerneuf, and with the town's previous priest as Jesus. Some wonky editing in the book made it unclear who was playing Satan in the painting, or who was immortalised as a statue just above the church door. Oh dear.

The friendly but nervous priest Beaumarais told them some of the history behind the painting -- including the financial irregularities and mysterious disappearance of his predecessor -- and they assumed that his agitation was a sign of him concealing his cult affiliation, leading to a bizarre scene in which McVeigh attempted to convince the poor old man to tell the "truth" by revealing that prancing about in hooded robes and chanting were common springtime activities in Belgium -- from where the group claimed to originate -- so he had nothing to hide from them.

Earlier, the team had discovered that one of the houses in town was available to rent as the owner had

vanished some years before; by this point the players were certain that all the town's inhabitants were either members of the still-unconfirmed cult or had disappeared, probably at the hands of said cult, an impression not countered by the discovery of the ransacked remains of an occult library in the loft. Aside from the worm-ridden books, a wonky kitchen table, and a musty armchair, the house was a bit bare so -- fearing Helena's wrath if they returned to the farm -- the agents stayed in the town's dilapidated hotel.

It was there that they made a breakthrough in their secret secret mission to find the missing German occultist Lionel Malo. Sneaking about after hours McVeigh discovered that Malo had stayed at the hotel and as luck -- or rather a Luck roll -- would have it, O'Brien and Tinkerton were staying in the same room as he had years before. The group's first search turned up nothing more than a few rat traps under the beds but by the morning light and with a bit more focus to their searching they found an envelope taped to the back of the room's greasy mirror. Inside was a note written by Malo and going into some detail on an apparent cult ritual and his last hours in the town.

They had more fortune later that day while shopping for supplies. Suspicious scientist Tinkerton was browsing the second-hand section of the town's general shop, and stumbled upon an old suitcase and a camera, the latter of which Tidelina identified as being about ten years old and of German manufacture. Neither item was conclusive evidence of Malo's presence but they were unusual enough for the group to buy them and later -- back at what the players were already calling "the Shunned House" -- they examined them in more detail; in the suitcase McVeigh discovered a hidden compartment -- his spy training helped him recognise it as a professional job -- in which was a map of some sort of tunnel network, with notes in German, including a reference to a "secret entrance".

The agents were convinced that they had found a map of the local copper mine and that the answers to the entire mystery would be found there. The only potential problem was that the mine had been commandeered by the German army and earlier in the day some of the group's identification papers had been confiscated by some suspicious soldiers.